Crumbly sweet shortcrust pastry – my mom’s recipe.

I think I have said before but my mom is the person who makes the best pastry in the world so when I helped my dad out with some Christmas baking, I was pleased to see my mom had left the recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry.

I looked online this morning for a good recipe but I couldn’t settle on one that I felt was right. Pastry is one of them things that either works really well and is lovely and crumbly, or it tastes of rubber.

My mom’s recipe isn’t suitable for everyone as it contains lard, but I think this is what makes it taste so good. I remember my mom being really worried a couple of years ago that there was going to be a lard shortage near Christmas so she panicked and we ended up having loads in the fridge. I think it took her ages to get through it all and the great lard shortage didn’t seem to happen on such a grand scale as my mom worried about, probably because she is one of only a few people who actually buys it!

Anyway, with the pastry I made both mince pies and apple pies. The apple pies are for my little sister (little being 25 years old) who doesn’t like mincemeat. I used a mincemeat jar I have been saving for a while, it has dark chocolate in. My dad, being “the official mince pie straight out of the oven tester”, said he couldn’t taste any different to normal – maybe it wasn’t really worth saving.

In a bowl put the flour, margarine, sugar and lard and mix until looks like bread crumbs.
Beat the egg and milk together in a separate bowl and combine to the other mix. It should start to hold together as a dough, if a little dry add a couple of tbsp of water.

To use, try not to ‘play’ with it too much, by rolling it out over and over again, as this adds extra flour and can make it a little tough but it is a pretty durable pastry so great for kids to use.

*I use mom instead of mum as I am from a place near to the Black Country which tends to have a little bit of the accent in there without having a complete ‘Yam Yam’ accent.